In one conventional storage network a requesting system may issue a request to a storage system to access a block of data stored in the storage system. The size of the block may be predetermined in this arrangement, and the request may indicate the data block to be accessed by specifying in the request the beginning address of the block in the storage system. In this arrangement, the size of the block may be larger than the maximum size that a data payload may have in a frame in accordance with the protocol via which the two systems exchange data and commands. Accordingly, the data block may be fragmented into a sequence of multiple segments, the segments may be placed into respective frames, and the frames may be transmitted in an order that corresponds to the sequence order of the respective segments that the respective frames contain. After being received by the requesting system, the segments may be presented to a program process for processing.
In this conventional arrangement, execution of the program process may stall and/or otherwise be impeded, at least in part, pending receipt of a certain part of the data block, and only receipt of that part may permit the program process to continue its unimpeded execution. Depending upon the size of the data block, this may introduce an undesirable amount of latency in the program process' execution, since a later-received frame may contain this part of the data block.
Although the following Detailed Description will proceed with reference being made to illustrative embodiments, many alternatives, modifications, and variations thereof will be apparent to those skilled in the art. Accordingly, it is intended that the claimed subject matter be viewed broadly.